According to NetEase Games’ 2023 financial report, among the customers who enjoyed discounts through the official cooperation platform identification v top up, 41% used holiday activities. For the “Halloween Limited Gift Pack” event in 2023, by recharging 60 echoes with a value of around $10, one can get an additional $3 in headwear worth as a gift. Its real discounting rate is as high as 23%. Third-party websites such as Codashop and SEAGM also offer regional discounts. For instance, Malaysian gamers are entitled to a 15% cashback (up to 30 Malaysian Ringgit per purchase) when they top up using the Boost e-wallet. But due to exchange rate volatility (the Malaysian Ringgit fell by 9% against the US dollar in 2023), the actual savings have dwindled to 7%. High risks are associated with unofficial channels, it has to be noted. In the “EchoDeals” scam case solved by the Indonesian police in 2022, the platform lured users with a promotion of “a $25 discount for a $100 recharge”, but the reality that the real arrival rate was merely 58%, and 34% of users had their accounts frozen due to abnormal sources of funds (data source: NetEase Game Security Center).
Official activities are the optimal way to obtain discounts in a safe way. During the 6th anniversary of “Identity V” in 2024, players were able to unlock the exclusive skin “Nightingale Song” by filling the game with 300 echoes (around 50 US dollars) in a single purchase, which pushed the daily recharge revenue peak to 4.2 million US dollars, up 29% year on year. In a second, NetEase and Apple App Store’s “Weekly Limited-time Discount” event confirms that users’ average payment for a single 60 echo recharge has dropped from $10 to $8.5 (discount rate 15%), and the repurchase times of users who took part in. have been increased to 1.8 times per month (data source: Sensor Tower). Compared with this, there are also some third-party platforms that offer cheap echoes by. through “exchange rate difference arbitrage”. For instance, in 2023, a Turkish player took advantage of the devaluation of the lira (a 44% devaluation throughout the year) to recharge $100 worth of echoes through a local payment gateway at a price of just $56. However, due to the violation of cross-regional recharge regulations as stipulated in the User Agreement, The account ban rate is up to 19% (NetEase’s 2023 Account Ban Report).
The payment method significantly affects the discount benefit. Refilling Echo through the “Cross-border Remittance” service of Alipay will have an effective cost of 3.5% over the official quoted price due to the handling fee rate (1.2%) and exchange rate conversion loss (about 2.3%). The local sites NetEase cooperates with, e.g., MyCard (in Taiwan), support cash payment via convenience stores. When you reload NT $1,000 (approximately US $32), you receive an additional 12% echo. Credit arrival time has been cut to 10 seconds from 3 minutes for credit card payments. But beware of black and gray market channels: In 2023, Vietnam’s “EchoFarm” gang utilized stolen credit cards to resell Echo at 75% of the market price, resulting in 12,000 player accounts being suspended and players losing an average of 28 US dollars (source: Vietnam Cyber Security Agency).
Regionalized pricing strategy offers opportunities for frugal players. Due to the mandatory dollar payment by the government, the echo unit price of the App Store for the Argentina region was 18% lower than that of other regions in 2023 and drew a large number of players to use the cross-regional account identity v top up. However, the risk control system of NetEase identified the matching rate of device IP, payment card BIN code and account login location. Accuracy in identifying such violations was 92%, and the duration of the first ban for violation was extended to 30 days from 7 days (data source: NetEase Games Compliance White Paper). For comparison, Japanese players who top-up via the official partner platform DMM have a 5% point return (which can be exchanged into in-game items). As it follows the rules of regional compliance, the rate of account risk is less than 0.3%.
Concealed discount sources include community actions and social media. In 2023, the real Douyin live streaming room of “Identity V” launched a “Follow and Recharge, Get a Discount” offer. Audience who recharge 200 RMB and more can enjoy a discount of 30 RMB (with a discount ratio of 15%). It earned over 850,000 RMB in sales for Echo alone through a live broadcast. Moreover, the “Echo Group Buying” feature available in the NetEase Dashen APP allows recharge by a group of three members. When all the members of the group charge up to the total of 500 yuan collectively, each user will also receive an additional bonus of 8% Echo discount, reducing per-Echo price to 0.092 yuan (original rate 0.1 yuan). But false advertisements must not be easily believed. In 2022, a domestic Kuaishou live-streamer made “50% off recharge through internal channels” false claims, but actually conducted business in a money laundering chain. The involved amount was over 2 million yuan, and the victims’ account suspension rate reached 100% (data source: Jiangsu Cyber Police Notification).
Overall, for Security identity v top up, there needs to be more priority given to official activities (discount rate 15-25%), regional cooperation platforms (compliance savings rate 7-12%), and cashback of payment tool points (3-8%) so that rampant chasing for discounts (>30%) does not activate the risk control mechanism. According to NetEase statistics, re-consumption complaint resolution ratio of recharges through compliant channels is up to 97% and the average handling time can be 6 hours. In contrast, the rate of success of dispute resolution through non-official channels is less than 20%, while fund recovery reaches merely 3% (source: Consumer Rights Protection Association).